The rankings, made public Monday, revealed that DeKalb Early College Academy is the highest performing high school in Georgia, and the DeKalb School of the Arts is among the state's top five high schools. DeKalb County School District is Georgia's only district to have two high schools in the top five.

Three DeKalb elementary schools -- Austin, Kittredge and Wadsworth -- are among Georgia's top 25 elementary schools, according to the index.

(WXIA) -- The Washington Post has unveiled its 2014 list of America's Most Challenging High Schools.

The newspaper determines the annual rankings through a ratio: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests a school gives each year, divided by the number of graduating seniors.

Nine DeKalb County schools made the list, which features more than 2,000 high schools across the country. The listed numbers are each school's national ranking.

(WXIA) -- Last week, 11Alive News received a shocking video clip from a viewer. The footage showed a teenage boy being repeatedly punched in the face in a locker room at Parkview High School in Gwinnett County.

The video prompted an investigation into reports of violence and fights in Georgia's public schools. The Georgia Department of Education provided 11Alive News with four years' worth of discipline incident reports for every school in the state.

(WXIA) -- The U.S. Department of Education recently released its "Year Three" Report for the 12 states participating in the Race to the Top grant initiative.

Educational practices and successes in Georgia were highlighted throughout the report.

"We have taken on some major initiatives and our success is a direct reflection of the collaborative efforts between our department, other education agencies and the hundreds of participating teachers, principals and district leaders around our state," Dr. Susan Andrews, Deputy Superintendent of Race to the Top Implementation in Georgia, said in a release.

"While educational reform work is never easy, we are pleased with the significant progress that our state has made as reflected in this report," Andrews added.

Some highlights from the report include:

* Nearly 300 Georgia teachers were placed in state public schools from alternative certification programs.

(ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE) -- Several Georgia schools scored well on U.S. News and World Report's 2015 list of Best Graduate Schools.

U.S. News says it analyzed more than 1,300 graduate programs to determine this year's rankings.

The University of Georgia's public affairs program is ranked No. 4 among the nation's top public affairs schools -- higher than Princeton University (No. 5). Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies is ranked No. 23, while Georgia Tech's program is ranked No. 53.

Georgia Tech's graduate engineering program is ranked No. 6 among engineering programs, tied with University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The top five engineering grad schools are, in order, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University.

(WXIA) -- A few seats are still available at Georgia Connections Academy for the 2014-15 school year.

Georgia Connections Academy is a virtual K-12 public school that allows students to learn at their own pace. It is fully accredited and open to all school-age Georgia children.

"We are enrolling 1,000 additional students across all grade levels for the coming academic year," lead principal Heather Robinson said in a release. "We have a waiting list as we open enrollment, so we encourage parents to get their applications in now."